My first indication that Lissie is a down-to-earth kind of chick is that, when I call her to check in before her stops in New York and Boston on a tour in preview of her new album (dropping sometime in September) she’s waiting in line at a gas station bathroom. She asks me, with a throaty laugh, if it would be cool if I called her back when she’s done. Never mind that most touring artists travel on pimped out tour buses with bathrooms nicer than those in some Allston apartments I’ve frequented. When I call back — having waited what I hope is sufficient time to allow Lissie to do her business — she confirms this assessment, having just shot a music video in her hometown of Rock Island, Illinois for the second song on her upcoming album, “Further Away ‘Romance Police.’”

What’s the video about?

I feel like where you’re from has such a big part to do with who you are. I don’t want to ruin the surprises, but we just walked around to lots of different sites that were memorable and special to me. A friend of mine is a police officer and once it got dark he turned on his police lights which made some really cool lighting.

What’s your process for writing this album been like?

I’ve had quite a bit of downtime. I needed a break because I was just getting kind of worn out, but was also anxious to make a new record and hadn’t really done a ton of writing when I was on the road. So he last nearly two years I’ve been writing and kind of spending time at home and cultivating some of my other interests.

What kind of other interests?

I just got a road bike and I’m not like a super awesome pro yet but I really got into riding my bike. About 20 miles is the most I’ve written but I’ve kind of become addicted to it. It’s not something I can really do when I’m on the road. And I live in a really beautiful place — I have a dog, I take him out and we go for long walks. I really just like being outdoors, and that was one thing from the first album cycle — it’s like you’re always on a plane, or in a car, or inside a venue, so when I’m home I’m never inside. But I’ve really gotten addicted to so many TV shows. I’ve gotten really into wine (laughs) I drink a lot of wine. I like red because it’s just kind of calm, this warm rush over you…

Melty.

Yes, melty, exactly.

So what TV shows are you into right now?

Oh, it’s like what shows am I NOT into? I love “Game of Thrones,” I’m really excited about “Arrested Development” coming back. I also like Nashville a lot, it’s very good. I made my first record in Nashville and I think they do a good job of showing the city. I watch everything. “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Modern Family.” I just watched “House of Cards” on Netflix, that’s amazing. So yeah, basically I spend a lot of time drinking wine and watching TV. (laughs) Oh! I also can swim a mile now. And I’ve been spending time with my family back in the Midwest.

Speaking of the Midwest — and Midwestern values — do you feel like you’ve changed since gaining some fame and moving to California?

I wouldn’t say I feel like the same person but I don’t think that that’s because anything has changed. I think as you get older you kind of come into your personality and learn from life experiences. I guess in a way I put out the single “Shameless” because it’s me proclaiming that I don’t want to have to be anything other than myself or be underhanded or desperate or shady to find success. Even if I wanted to be all Hollywood I wouldn’t know how to do it. I don’t think I’m socially awkward but I don’t really know how to be mysterious, or manipulative, I don’t really know how to manipulate people’s energy. And I’m glad that I don’t know how to do that.

Have you ever been asked to compromise yourself like that?

Not that it was asked of me, but I’ve seen that other people have done it. Say, you and some other girl really liked a guy and she was just going to be throwing herself at him all night. And you feel like, well, I’m not going to do that. And maybe she gets to go home with him. But I don’t want to stoop to that level. I just want to be myself and if he doesn’t come home with me then he’s not the right one for me.

That’s a cool metaphor for fame.

Thanks! I’m glad it made sense. I think in the song, too, I even acknowledge it. Like, why does it bother me, “why do I react so angrily, it’s just my insecurities acting up.” Because there’s also something where, if you are in a situation, and two people are going for the same thing, my inclination is to sort of retreat a little bit, where I’m like (puts on a bratty voice) “well, I don’t even care, I didn’t want to be part of this stupid club.” (laughs)

What do you prefer playing, big fests or club shows?

I think when I was starting out doing festivals I really liked them because it was new to me and it was really exciting. There were so many bands, and you got the cool backstage area where you got to go see music, and you got to talk to people, and it’s very social. I think that used to be very fun for me. Whereas now, it’s still fun but it’s also really exhausting because you have to preserve your strength a little and it’s too tempting at a festival to just be like ‘oh, I’m just going to have a blast’ and then feel like ‘oh, I can’t sing now because I talked too much.’ But I really like club shows because people are there to see you, and I’m still in a place where we get to play kind of intimate shows, and you get the feeling of who your crowd is and connecting with them.

How would you self-describe your genre?

When I started out I was a singer-songwriter, with an acoustic guitar, and kind of had some folk tendencies — but I kind of wrote pop songs. This next record is not as much showing off my folk sensibilities, I mean they’re still there, but I’ve been playing with my band so much over the past few years and we really kind of rock out. So I think this record is a little more consistently rock/pop. You’ll detect some faint traces of folky, kind of country, gospel-ish vocals, potentially, but the music is pretty much rock music.

I think this is an interesting time for folk music, like how the Lumineers were up for a Grammy — I thought that was sort of unusual.

I did too! I mean I like that song, and I like them — so I don’t mean this in a bad way — but I almost feel like that trend has sort of ended. I think the Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show started it, and were doing it, and it wasn’t mainstream. And then Mumford & Sons really brought that into the mainstream consciousness. Which is really great, because it opened the doors for a lot of bands to be successful, but I’m not sure that that’s where it will stay.

Right. Well, what do you think is going to be the next wave?

My prediction is that the guitar solo is kind of coming back. And I want to be part of that.

Really?

I’ve been listening to a lot of the Hall & Oates Pandora station, and that music has kind of been resonating with me again. It’s kind of dramatic music, and it’s kind of a little cheesy, and it’s got the epic guitar solos. But I think it’s so emotionally evocative, it makes you really feel like ‘YEAHya!’ So I really feel like there’s going to be a Hall & Oates-esque revival, but who knows?

I was actually about to ask you what I’d find if I looked at your Recently Played playlist on your iPod…

My obnoxious answer is that I really don’t listen to music because it, like, stresses me out. I know that sounds terrible. But I had this shift happen where I used to listen to a lot of music and I used to write a lot just for fun and I of course still love music and still love performing, but it’s taken on a different kind of role in my life now that I have to think about it differently. But one album that I was listening to a lot was Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska”. And I love Lana Del Rey’s album. I think she is someone who I wasn’t really feeling her vibe, because I was just being a bitchy girl. I think I was like, ‘oh she’s glamorous, I don’t like her.’ (laughs) I didn’t want to like her. But then I got her album and I love it, I love the entire thing. It’s like she’s creating a whole world, it’s not just music. I feel like it’s very evocative of another era or something. It haunts you. She’s a good storyteller, I don’t know how much of it is like a character, but I feel like she could write a novel and I’d want to read it.

Did you watch her SNL debacle?

After I saw that, and saw how mean people were being, it made me like her more. Because, you know what, not everyone that is good in the studio is necessarily good live. I think my problem for a long time was that I’m kind of better live than I am in the studio.

That’s not a terrible problem to have.

But that doesn’t make me a better artist or more of an artist. I also like how Kristen Wiig went on as her and defended her, I thought that was really cute. I love Kristen Wiig. Oh, I like the new Tegan and Sara album. That’s kind of my feeling about pop music even, like they’re onto something, they might be a little bit ahead of the trend. I feel like their kind of pop music is going to be considered credible again because it makes you feel good…it’s fun to listen to. I’ve gotten into exercising again, taking care of myself, and I couldn’t really get myself motivated to run — and then I put on the Tegan and Sara record and I was like ‘ok, I can run.’

Yeah, they’re great. And they’ve been great for awhile. It’s funny how one hit song can suddenly propel an artist into the public consciousness — I hope it lasts for them.

It’s a tricky thing. When I look at what I’d like my career to be like, I’d just like to be respected and financially stable, it’s pretty much all I can ask for. And anything else is kind of a pleasant bonus. Even at the level I’m at now — I mean, I got a cold, I keep getting sick because I think I’m not used to being busy, and I have interviews, and have to do a show… and I think to have an overnight hit and be on that trajectory would be so stressful. Maybe I’m afraid of success or something, but I’m kind of really happy where I’m at right now.

I love your cover of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness.” Who would you want to cover one of your songs, if you could pick anyone?

I think it would be cool if Asap Rocky covered me. I guess he did cover me, he sampled me, but somebody in a totally different genre. Like Metallica, but that would never happen. (laughs) I love Metallica.

Haha ok. What else?

Just that if people aren’t sure, just come to our show! I can probably give you, like, a 90 percent guarantee that they’ll enjoy themselves. (laughs)

GO SEE HER:

New York
June 3 @ 8 p.m.
Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St., New York
$18
ticketmaster.com

Boston
June 5 @ 9 p.m.
Brighton Music Hall
158 Brighton Ave., Allston
$18
ticketmaster.com

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There isn’t a language barrier when it comes to the music of Prince Royce.

The Latin music superstar rocked the crowd at Jay-Z’s Made in America Festival last summer — even though he sang his set in Spanish.

“It was such a big experience seeing so many genres [of music] and ethnicities getting together as one,” Royce says. “I was singing in Spanish and the people were dancing, it was really nice.”

Royce is a star in Latin America, but he’s certainly made in America. He was born in the States to Dominican parents and raised in the Bronx. His 2010 self-titled debut was a No. 1 smash on the Latin charts and his singles routinely rack up more than 30 million views on YouTube.

“There are so many kids like me growing up and raised Latin who were born in the United States, from mixed cultures,” Royce says. “I try to project that in my songs and my performances.”

It’s fitting that Royce is set to headline the El Zol Fest on Saturday at Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing. El Zol, located at 1340 AM, strives to appeal to listeners who speak both Spanish and English.

The foundation of Royce’s sound is bachata, a guitar-based music that originated in the countryside barrios of the Dominican Republic and has gone on to rival salsa and merengue music in much of Latin America. In the U.S., the music is still only regionally popular, but groups like Aventura have secured such a standing that they performed at the White House for President Obama in 2009.

Royce is making his music more mainstream by adding R&B accents and singing some songs in English, as he did with his bachata version of Ben E. King’s classic “Stand By Me.” He also has a pan-American appeal as he brings in diverse Latin influences, including Mexican ranchera, into his songs.

“I try to reach everybody in Latin culture,” Royce says. “I try to add different sounds to cater to everybody and give everybody something to try to explore.”

He’s diving all the way in to the English-speaking market in the next year or so with an English-language album from RCA.

“It’s definitely a challenge for me, it’s a whole new ballgame,” Royce says. “Myself, I grew up listening to R&B so we’ll have pop, a little Spanish and a little bit of Latin rhythms, but most of it will be in English with a Latin flavor.”
 

If you go

El Zol Fest with Prince Royce and Alex Matos

May 25, 7 p.m.

Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing

Columbus Blvd. and Spring Garden St.

$44.85

www.elzolphilly.com

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In a move that will come as a shock to exactly nobody, before performing two new tracks on “SNL” on Saturday, Kanye West announced that his new album (dropping June 18) will be called “Yeezus.” Are we the only ones who are starting to find Yeezy’s God Complex sort of tiring? We get it, you’re a big deal. Like, the hugest deal. If, however, those pesky gay rumors the tabloids are circulating turn out to be true, there may be a case for an immaculate conception situation with Ye and Kim K’s unborn spawn.

The post The Word: Kanye’s second coming of Yeezus appeared first on Metro.us.

Violinist Gil Shaham has some music picked out in case he ever finds himself with a lot of free time.

Brahms’ Violin Concerto, he says, “would be one of the musical masterpieces that I would take with me if I was going to be marooned on a desert island.”

The Grammy winner will be in town this week to play the Brahms piece with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“Performing with the Philadelphia Orchestra is like playing in the NBA All-Star game,” he says. “It’s the highlight of my year. They play at such a high level.”

Shaham is bringing an all-star instrument: He’ll perform on a Stradivarius — but he says he puts the multimillion-dollar price tag out of his head, joking that the violin is worth $16.99, the year it was made, plus taxes and delivery.

Things were a little tenser the one time he thought he lost it.

“I finished a fantastic meal in Rome. I had already crossed the street when I realized that I had left the violin by my seat,” he says. “I panicked. Luckily, the violin was still there.”

When the Strad was originally offered to him, Shaham, who had already filled in for Itzhak Perlman when the famous violinist had to bow out of a concert series with the London Symphony Orchestra, had trouble getting a loan to buy it. “I was in my 20s, didn’t have a college degree, and was asking to borrow millions of dollars to purchase a violin,” he says. “Then I remembered that I had the business card of Hans Baer, whose family owned the Julius Baer bank. He had come backstage when I played in Geneva and said to call him if I needed anything. I called and his bank helped me buy the violin.”

If you go

Gil Shaham Plays Brahms
May 23-25 (May 23 sold out)
Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center
300 S. Broad St.
$86-$192
www.kimmelcenter.org

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Malmo in Sweden was hosting the grand final of the 58th Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday.

Here are some facts about the contest:

* The first contest took place in 1956. It was originally conceived in Monaco by Marcel Bezencon and based on the Italian Sanremo Festival, held since 1951. Switzerland won the first contest.

EUROVISION RECORDS:

* Ireland’s Johnny Logan won the contest three times. In 1980 and 1987 he sang the Irish entry, and in 1992 he wrote the winning entry for his compatriot, Linda Martin.

* ABBA is the winner that has gone on to have the most international success. The Swedish band won the contest in 1974 with “Waterloo”.

* Norway has come last most often – in 1963, 1969, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1990, 1997, 2001 and 2004. However, it has also won three times – in 1985, 1995 and 2009.

* Ireland has won seven times; Luxembourg, France and the United Kingdom five times; Sweden and the Netherlands four times.

* In 2008 and 2011, a record 43 countries participated. Morocco has taken part in the contest only once, in 1980.

* In 2011, Lena, the winner of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest, decided to defend her title on home ground in Germany – something only two people have done in the history of the contest.

* The most covered song in the contest is Domenico Mudugno’s “Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu”, also known as “Volare”.

* English has been the main language of 24 winning entries. French is also popular, with 14 victories. Dutch and Hebrew songs have won three times each.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2012:

* Sweden’s Loreen won the 2012 contest in Azerbaijan before an international TV audience of 100 million, days after angering Azeri authorities by meeting rights activists critical of the host country’s human rights record.

* The 28-year-old won with the song “Euphoria”, dancing barefoot as she sang. After the show, traditionally heavy on kitsch, bizarre costumes and dramatic presentation but low on politics, Loreen steered clear of any controversial statements.

Sources: Reuters/Eurovision Song Contest Website

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It’s been awhile since hip-hip artist Eve released an album — we haven’t heard much from the Ruff Rider’s First Lady since 2004’s “Eve-loution” — which had a lot of people wondering if she’d fallen off her game. Turns out, she’s been busy working on her personal life. She currently lives in London with her boyfriend of three years, British EDM artist and producer Max Cooper. Lucky for fans, love has not slowed E-V-E down one bit. Having spent the last few years touring around Europe, she’s headed back to states with her newest album “Lip Lock,” which was dropped yesterday.

Her first single, “Make It Out This Town” (an unlikely collabo with Gabe Saporta of Cobra Starship) has yet to earn a spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 list — and perhaps with good reason. After a long-term hiatus from the States, returning to the scene while the Minaj empire is still thriving, Eve would have done well to have come out swinging, with a tougher single to let everyone know she’s still got it. And here’s the thing: she does.

“Lip Lock,” in full, shows a new side to Eve. Powerhouse rap and R&B names both old and new — including Chrisette Michelle, Missy Elliott, and Snoop Lion (nee Dogg) — feature on the album. And while a handful of heartfelt tracks span the album (check out “Never Gone” and “Forgive Me”) don’t think for minute that Eve’s gone soft. Her cocky wordplay on every verse is still as strong as when she first came out in 1999. “Mama in the Kitchen”, “EVE” and “She Bad Bad (Remix)” are hot singles that command respect.

Listeners looking for the Eve of Ruff Ryder-fame may not find her. However, a fan who is willing to explore a new — and perhaps improved — Eve will appreciate a new album with an evolved style that’s fitting for her re-introduction to the airwaves. In her recent interview on Power 105.1 with The Breakfast Club, Eve describes herself as “feeling like a new artist”.

We’re thinking that “Lip Lock” can hold its own with this release, as no other female hip-hop artist is set to release an album at the moment.

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Throughout its eighth season, Dolce Suono Ensemble has been celebrating the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy. This Sunday, the Philly-based chamber ensemble will close that celebration with a special gift to the late French composer: seven new works commissioned to reflect on Debussy’s songs and miniature works. The commissions are the result of Dolce Suono’s first Young Composers Competition, which called for scores from composers under 30 who are American or enrolled in a U.S. educational institution.

“There’s a lot of variety in the seven works,” says Dolce Suono’s artistic director, Mimi Stillman. “While they all reflect on Debussy, they do so in their individual voices, which range from sophisticated contemporary musical language to more popular-inspired tonality through to very ample use of extended techniques. It shows how fertile Debussy’s music is for composers today.”

Several of the composers hail from the Philadelphia region, including students at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, though they also range as far afield as Chicago, Michigan and Kentucky. The youngest is only 17 years old. The competition is in line with Dolce Suono’s ongoing effort to add to the chamber repertoire; in its eight years it has presented 31 world premieres, including commissions from emerging composers as well as Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winners.

For Stillman, a flautist who will perform on Sunday along with soprano Sarah Shafer and pianist Natalie Zhu, this season has been the fulfillment of a long-term engagement with Debussy’s work. She is also a historian who wrote her thesis on the Asian influences in Debussy’s music, as well as a book of arrangements of the composer’s songs which she’ll draw on for part of this weekend’s performance. “I’ve lived with and studied Debussy and his world for a long time,” Stillman says, “so I was really happy to have this anniversary opportunity to delve into his chamber and vocal music.”

With a program split between Debussy’s work and the new pieces inspired by it, Stillman hopes to spotlight his continuing relevance to contemporary music. “It’s always thrilling when you have new work, because you never know what people are going to take away. Every person in the audience will probably have his or her own experience, but I think people will be struck by how alive and modern his music still sounds.”

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OCD: Moosh and Twist are driving hometown audiences crazy.

“We played the First Unitarian Church [in December] and it was awesome, but we were literally three songs into the set and somebody pulled the fire alarm,” says DeQuincy “Moosh” Coleman-McRae. “The fire department came and the owner had to shut down the show.”

A February show at Union Transfer didn’t fare much better.

“We sold that out and it got shut down, too” Coleman-McRae says. “There were drunk kids and a bunch of fights. At the moment it was terrible but people ended up talking about it and anybody talking about you is, for the most part, good.”

Overall it’s been a good run so far for OCD: Moosh & Twist, and the future looks bright. The rapping, singing duo — Coleman-McRae and Oliver “Twist” Feighan — hit the scene with 2010′s “City Kids,” a burst of effervescence and street slyness that sampled Journey. “City Kids” was viewed more than 1.5 million times on YouTube and set the foundation for their uplifting sound. The pair, independent to this point, recently released the free mixtape, “Back to the Basement.”

It’s all about elevating your circumstances.

“We’re having fun,” Coleman-McRae, 20, says. “There’s positivity there because we’re following our dream.”

They’ve been touring the eastern half of the U.S. with Huey Mack and are gearing up for a performance May 16 at the TLA. We’re hoping they’ll do a full set this time.

“One of the things we like the most is performing and looking out in the crowd and seeing kids singing and rapping along to the verses,” says Feighan, also 20. “It’s such a crazy feeling. They might be stressed out or dealing with a girlfriend or family issues, but then they see us perform for 45 minutes and they forget about everything going on.”

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Whether you’re tailgating before the show or rocking out inside the venue, summer concerts are a ready-made soundtrack that is just awaiting your participation to build memories. Here are the biggest and best bets for your concert dollar.

Kenny Chesney
One thing that has not changed in America for the past 100 years: Cowboys are still really good at herding large groups of mammals into confined open-air structures. Eric Church, Eli Young Band and Kacey Musgraves round out this rootin’-tootin’ bill. June 8, Lincoln Financial Field

The Rolling Stones
It is impossible to refute the naysayers’ complaint that the Stones are old. Their current string of shows is celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary of their formation and first album. But it’s also impossible to refute that the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band is still worth seeing. Switching up sets to dip into obscurities in their deep catalogue, you’ll get to hear some classic tunes. Whew! We did that without using either a “Satisfaction” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” reference. June 18 and 21, Wells Fargo Center

Bruno Mars
Bruno Mars has turned his “Unorthodox Jukebox” into a 1980s time machine, which works out just fine for his opening act, Fitz and the Tantrums, who have also set the dial for the 1980s with their brand new “More Than Just a Dream.” Wear your neon jams and join them. June 24, Wells Fargo Center

One Direction
If seeing the New Kids/98 Degrees/Boyz II Men show bummed you out, go see a boy band that includes actual boys. June 25, Wells Fargo Center

Justin Bieber
Who would have thought at this time last year that the Justin Bieber tour would become the equivalent of the Rolling Stones’ 1972 tour in terms of rumored debauchery? We can only hope he’s still around for his own “50 and Counting” tour in 2060. July 17, Wells Fargo Center

Taylor Swift
It wouldn’t be summer without a stadium and TaySwi (people call her that, right?). This year she brings with her that huggable British muppet Ed Sheeran, as well as Austin Mahone and Joel Crouse. July 19 and 20, Lincoln Financial Field

Beyonce
Beyonce was going to release a new album this year. Remember that? Seems like she might not have remembered either, as Mrs. Carter sets out on the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour before her new songs have even hit the market. It’s kind of like when it’s the end of the school year, and absolutely all of your friends are psyched to be done with exams, but you’ve still got one left that you totally forgot to study for. The only difference is she has the ability to say, “I’m Beyonce. I don’t have to take your damn final!” July 25, Wells Fargo Center

Americanarama Festival of Music
For a genre that takes itself a little too seriously when at its worst, these three giants of Americana prove that a sense of humor is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. By calling their tour Americanarama, Bob Dylan, Wilco and My Morning Jacket are quite obviously not taking themselves too seriously. July 28, Susquehanna Bank Center

Under the Influence of Music Tour
Wiz Khalifa, A$AP Rocky, B.o.B. and Trinidad James are a stellar lineup, but we have to wonder: Now that marijuana is pretty much totally legal, when are musicians going to stop giving their tours titles with little winking references to weed? Aug. 2, PNC Bank Arts Center

Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z
Arguably the biggest tour of the summer, it remains to be seen how Jay-Z and JT will split the stage on The 20/20 World Tour. We can only hope that there are 20 songs from each artist, rather than a staged recreation of the best moments of ABC’s most popular investigative journalism TV show. That said, it would be awesome if they did that for the first few shows and then switched it up by the time they got here. Aug. 13, Citizens Bank Park

John Mayer
We still don’t like the dude’s music, but we can appreciate that his body is a wonderland. Lookin’ good, Johnny! Aug. 23, Susquehanna Bank Center

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To hear Youngblood Hawke’s Sam Martin talk, you might imagine him some kind of environmentalist, rather than the frontman of a swiftly rising indie-pop outfit. “I think it’s important to conserve nature and take care of our earth, because we’re blessed and fortunate to have it,” he says. “I feel like one day we’re going to look, and it’s going to disappear on us, and we’re going to wish that we had lived a little bit differently.”

He’s talking about the inspiration for the music video for the band’s single “We Come Running,” which was filmed entirely underwater and features the band members swimming alongside live sharks. “At the time there were a lot of shark attacks in California and we wanted to shed light on these animals because they were getting slaughtered by the millions,” he says. “We wanted to show people that they weren’t these man eating killers. They attack surfers occasionally because they think they’re fish … but once they know what you are, they’re not evil manhunters. We can’t keep slaughtering these animals at the rate we’re doing it because we’re going to completely wipe them out. And the ocean would die.”

Indeed, Martin says that if he weren’t making music he’d probably be working in the great outdoors, “maybe a tour guide in a national park or something.” Luckily for Martin (if not visitors to Yellowstone) he’s otherwise employed — making infectious, up-tempo electro-rock with one of his best college buds, producer Simon Katz.

Martin and Katz have been collaborating musically ever since the two decided to move from their college town of Boulder, Colo., to L.A. and start their first band, Iglu & Hartly. The band enjoyed moderate success, scoring a Top 5 hit in Europe, before dissolving suddenly — and painfully, says Martin — due to strained relationships with the other band members. “Simon and I felt like we didn’t really have a voice in the project … and it wasn’t a happy environment for us to be in anymore,” he says. “When you’re making music, but it’s not the music you want to make, there’s really no point. We felt like we could no longer express ourselves, and everything just fell apart.”

The two took the considerable angst of that loss and channeled it into the songs that would become Youngblood Hawke’s debut album, “Wake Up.” “We were really in a dark place and I think, looking back, we really wrote these songs to cheer ourselves up,” he reflects. “We were sitting in our living rooms, dead broke, trying to figure out what to do with our lives. We’d invested eight to 10 years of our lives [in Iglu & Hartly] and then one day it was completely gone. I think it was important to lift ourselves up, I think it was a cathartic experience. We were writing to make ourselves feel better. Definitely the songs have kind of an upbeat feel but I think that if you listen to the lyrics it gets really dark at points.”

When asked to describe the band’s sound, Martin hesitates. “I feel like describing music is like trying to describe a color,” he says. “There’s rock, there’s dance, there’s definitely synth, and there’s some pop elements to it, definitely. But I think what separates us is that we have some weirder lyrics that we balance out with the pop choruses.”

Martin might find their genre difficult to define, but he clearly articulates the band’s unofficial mission statement. “We’re all kind of excited about life,” he says. “In a live show we just like to give people a great experience. I feel like, they come to a show and buy a ticket, they should walk away feeling like we gave all of our effort to entertain them. We walk offstage and we have nothing left. We like to leave it all on the stage for the audience.”

When asked if he ever fears the specter of the one-hit wonder, a fate that befalls many young bands who burst onto the scene with that one catchy hit single and just as quickly fade away, he’s quick to dismiss it. “I feel confident in our album and our songwriting abilities. I think we’re just fortunate to be in this position right now, we’re taking it one day at a time,” he says. “Some bands don’t even get a song. We’re going to continue to write and evolve and get better, so I don’t think that’s something that really freaks me out at all.”

Youngblood Hawke stops in Boston and New York on a club tour before hitting the festival circuit this summer.

NEW YORK
May 13, 8 p.m
Santos Party House
96 Lafayette St., New York
$13-$15
ticketweb.com

BOSTON
May 14, 9 p.m.
Brighton Music Hall
158 Brighton Ave., Allston
$12
ticketmaster.com

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The Roots will serve as the house band, but Jimmy Fallon isn’t coming.

“He does his own thing on the fourth,” Tariq “Blackthought” Trotter said Thursday.

The musical group, which usually serves as the house band for Fallon’s late-night talk show, were on hand Thursday as city officials read the lineup for the Wawa Welcome to America! festival.

This year The Roots will be joined by John Mayer, Ne-Yo, Demi Lovato, Ben Taylor, J. Cole, Grace Potter and Jill Scott.

Mayor Michael Nutter billed the event, which will take place on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 4, as “the largest party in America.”

Despite requests, Nutter said he wouldn’t take the stage.

“I know my limitations,” he said.

Other events throughout the seven-day festival include:

- “Silver Linings Playbook” to play at Rittenhouse Square at 9 p.m. on July 1.

- National Constitution Center offers free admission all day July 2.

- Wawa, the title sponsor of the event, will distribute four tons of free hoagies at the Independence Visitor Center Lawn on Market Street between Fifth and Sixth streets from noon to 2 p.m. on July 2.

- Peter Nero and Philly Pops! perform free concert at Independence Hall at 8 p.m. on July 3

- Day-long Party on the Parkway starts at noon and ends at 10 p.m. with a fireworks display over the Philadelphia Museum of Art on July 4.

- Taste of Philly extends from July 5 through July 7.

The post Welcome America! 2013 festivities revealed appeared first on Metro.us.

Duke Fakir (seated) and the Four Tops will play at the Keswick.
Credit: Keswick Theatre

When Motown’s Four Tops wanted to make it big in the U.K., they looked for a little help from a new friend: Beatles manager Brian Epstein. He booked the Tops at his London Saville Theatre in 1966 in a performance that has since become legendary in England.

“He told us that he had seen us perform, and if you give me your top performance, I’ll guarantee that when you come back, you’ll be front-page news,” says Four Tops founding member Duke Fakir. “We did do one of our best shows and he was so happy, he was almost crying. The audience was standing in the aisles calling for more and more and he said, ‘You guys did it!’”

“When we came back, we were front-page news, and it was like that for years.”

The concert is regarded as a transition point in the U.K. from the Chuck Berry-ish rock of the early British Invasion bands to the more soulful and sophisticated pop sound which would soon emanate from England.

Epstein, who would pass away the following year at the age of 32, threw a party for the Tops at his home following the Saville triumph.

“Everybody was there — The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Small Faces, you name it. Anybody who was doing anything in England,” Fakir says. “They respectfully asked us questions about our music and it was almost like a loving thing — they really embraced us.”

The rest of the world has also embraced the Four Tops. The gentlemen of Motown have a catalog of enduring hits: “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Bernadette” and more. The Tops — Fakir is the last surviving original member — come through the area with the Temptations in a show at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside.

If you go

The Four Tops
Friday, 8 p.m.
SOLD OUT
http://www.keswicktheatre.com

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Storm Large will be making her Carnegie Hall debut when she sings with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra tonight. But it’s the edgier Philly-area show you don’t want to miss.

Large, who got her start on the CBS reality show “Rock Star: Supernova,” will be performing with the Storm Large Band at the Keswick Theater on Saturday. And it will be a totally different type of evening than what she’ll bring for a buttoned-up Carnegie Hall crowd.

“People have told me … what to do for a long time. I never listen. I do what I want to do and it has worked out,” she says. “Think of my performance as a ride in the back seat of a nice car. I pass through several boundaries and tickle the final boundary as long as I can.”

She’s planning a blend of original materials and covers, from the Pixies to Cole Porter, for the no-holds-barred, cabaret-style show.

Large is “more proper and wears a gown” for her regular appearances with the group Pink Martini, which plays classical and jazz music. On a recent break from touring with them, she filmed scenes with Geena Davis for an-as-yet-unnamed TNT series.

How’s that for mixing it up?

“The audience should not expect a band that simply plays music in a dark room. I talk to the audience. I get as raunchy as the audience lets me,” she says. “It’s like I am on a first date with the audience. I have to take the temperature of the room so I don’t know ahead of time how far I can go.”

Book club

Oprah chose Large’s memoir, “Crazy Enough,” as one of her Book of the Week selections.  The musical version of “Crazy Enough” attracted sold-out crowds in Portland for months.

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Yo, Adrian, LTJ Bukem’s coming to town.

Yep, it’s a fact. The U.K.-based drum-and-bass legend is one big “Rocky” fan.

“Ahh, yes, the Italian Stallion,” says LTJ Bukem, aka Danny Williamson, via email. “Rocky … goes the 15 rounds and looses. [It's] Rocky showing his guts, falling in love, proving that anything-is-possible attitude. ”

Williamson, who performs May 9 at The Blockley, has a bit of that anything-is-possible attitude, too. He’s the one who put the drum-and-bass genre, a style of electronic dance music, on the map in the early ’90s.

“I was 9 when ["Rocky"] came out and remember running round school laughing, shouting ‘Adrian!’ at any given opportunity,” Williamson says. “Yea, stupid I know. I also read a while back it was created for under a million dollars and made over $200 million — amazing.”

That’s the business man in Williamson talking. He founded his own record label, “Good Looking Records,” in the early ’90s and has since played around the world, making Philly a regular stop.

Williamson has remained a steady draw despite the vicissitudes of the mainstream American public when it comes to electronic music. The latest EDM blip on the pop radar was dub step.

“New musical genres are always exciting, and there’s been so many over the last two decades,” Williamson says. “There’s fans of each … with each you either love it or hate it, or love it all!”

His music is electronic at its core but infused with the aura of live music, especially jazz and soul. It’s fitting that a concert by jazz great Chick Corea put a young Williamson on his musical path.

“When I was 10 my then-piano tutor took me to see Chick Corea at the Albert Hall in London,” he says. “Indeed he was responsible for inspiring and influencing my musical direction, which lead to drum and bass.”

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Oh dear god, no. We thought the recording industry had reached its lowest pit of scum-sucking despair when it allowed Rebecca Black’s “Friday” to enter the world. Then we thought that actually maybe “My Jeans” had that topped and we could close the book on this thing.

We thought wrong. Because today we heard Patricia Krentcil a/k/a “The Tanning Mom’s” new song a/k/a ”the aural equivalent of sucking pus from a homeless man’s infected big toe while listening to feral cats mate in a meat grinder.” It’s called “It’s Tan Mom” (points for cleverness!) and it is a rap song.

Well, it’s a rap song if your definition of the genre extends to a middle-aged woman who has tanned herself the color of motor oil — and apparently sun-fried her brains — slur robotically (a sonic feat we didn’t even know was possible, dubbing this strange new genre #drunkrobotgaze) about — you guessed it — gettin’ tan.

Choice drunken robot slurred lines include: “I’m sexier…than…the Teen….Mom….and….Octo….Mom.”

Also, she’s a pretty good rhymer: “I want you to get away….from me…every day.” “My name is tan mom, tanning is the bomb.”

Also, this is the worst thing. And you can purchase it for a mere $0.99 on iTunes as of right now.

We give up.

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Festivals

Come Together: Koresh Dance Company’s Spring Dance Festival
Through May 12
Suzanne Roberts Theatre
480 S. Broad St.
$25-$35, 215-751-0959
www.koreshdance.org
Twenty-seven choreographers and dance companies are coming together for “Come Together,” a nine-day festival celebrating all kinds of dance: ballet, hip-hop, jazz, gymnastics, aerial, modern and more. We recommend Friday’s performance with local favorites Rennie Harris PureMovement and Brian Sanders’ JUNK. They’ll make you get up out of your seat and groove to the beat.

Tides of Freedom: Africa Presence on the Delaware River
Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Independence Seaport Museum
$13.50 for adults, $10 college/military/children
211 S. Columbus Blvd.
www.phillyseaport.org
The first exhibit in the Seaport Museum’s River of Freedom explores the concept of freedom through the evolution of the African experience along the Delaware River. Saturday is the opening celebration, with lots of family-friendly activities.

Strawberry Festival
Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
Peddler’s Village
Free, 215-794-4000
www.peddlersvillage.com
This annual festival isn’t just for strawberry lovers. (But who doesn’t like strawberries?) Visitors can stroll through the craft fair while listening to live music. For the kids, there’s a pie-eating contest! Strawberry pie, of course. Don’t worry, parents, plenty of strawberry treats, like strawberry butter and zeppoles, will be available for you.

Chestnut Hill Home and Garden Festival
Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Germantown Ave. between Rex and Willow Grove Aves.
Free
www.chestnuthillpa.com
Does your home need a little sprucing up? Head to Germantown Ave. to pick up plants, flowers and furniture from more than 150 home and garden vendors. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and Elmwood Park Zoo will be on hand along with live music. Don’t leave the kids at home — yoga, amusement rides and face painting will keep them entertained.

Music

Atlas Genius
Radio 104.5 Summer Block Party
Saturday, 3:45 p.m.-7 p.m.
The Piazza at Schmidt’s
1050 N. Hancock St.
Free
www.radio1045.com
Back by popular demand, the first of five summer block party concerts kicks off with headliner Atlas Genius, making it’s return to Philly after a rockin’ show at the Electric Factory back in February. Family of the Year and local band Jackson Kingsley will also be performing, and the Miller Lite Beer Garden will be flowing. Free music, beer and warm weather? Sounds like the perfect spring day.

Latino in America with Soledad O’Brien
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Kimmel Center
300 S. Broad St.
$25, 215-893-1999
www.kimmelcenter.org
As part of VOZ! Congreso, a collection of intimate conversations with acclaimed Latino celebrities and intellectuals, the popular CNN host will cover many topics featured in her show, “Latino in America.”

Curtis Symphony Orchestra
Sunday, 8 p.m.
Kimmel Center
300 S. Broad St.
$5-$45, 215-893-5262
www.curtis.edu
This is your last chance the beautiful sounds of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra —Sunday is their Season Finale Concert. The show features Curtis alumni and rising Metropolitan Opera stars Eric Owens and Heidi Melton.

Art

Snyderman-Works Gallery
Saturday, 4 p.m.
303 Cherry St.
Free, 215-238-9576
www.snyderman-works.com
As part of First Friday, Snyderman-Works Gallery is going all out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the zipper, (yep, the zipper), by throwing an innovative zipper fashion show. Nearby boutiques will also be participating ,including Three Sirens and Scarlett Alley. And you can’t have a celebration without food! Cuba Libre, Wedge and Fig, and more will provide food and drinks to make it the best zipper celebration ever.

The post The scene: where to go and what to do this weekend in Philly appeared first on Metro.us.

The 2012 film “A Late Quartet” traces the rifts that form in the relationships between the members of a long-running string quartet as its senior member (played by Christopher Walken) decides to retire. The members of the Tokyo String Quartet didn’t face such personal conflicts when founding member Kazuhide Isomura and violinist Kikuei Ikeda, who joined in 1974, decided to call it a day. But the remaining members made the no less dramatic decision to end the 43-year-old quartet with their departure.

“In the end, we felt it would be very hard to find two members that would have a unity of vision between the two of them, let alone with the remaining members from the previous incarnation of the group,” says cellist Clive Greensmith. “I think we both felt that it would be stretching just a little too far.”

The Tokyo String Quartet was founded in 1969 at the Juilliard School of Music by four musicians who had been influenced by Professor Hideo Saito at the Toho School of Music in Tokyo. “A quartet should evolve in different ways but always has to remember its roots,” says Greensmith, who joined the ensemble in 1999. “I always found that our group had a nice balance between heart and head and that the individual expression of each member was well balanced with the corporate vision of the group. It was and still is very much a cultural attribute that I’ve observed in Japanese people. There is an objectivity and a sense of allowing the music to speak for itself.”

Greensmith and violinist Martin Beavers, the quartet’s newest member, having joined 11 years ago, will continue to work together. Both are joining the faculty of Los Angeles’ Colburn School of Music, and plan to begin a new piano trio. But their current tour is a bittersweet farewell to the places and repertoire that the quartet has performed for more than four decades.

They’ll perform in Philadelphia for the final time on Sunday, with a program featuring Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Bartok.

“We played our last-ever Ravel quartet yesterday on Long Island,” Greensmith said when we spoke early this week. “So we’re saying goodbye to the music, familiar pieces that we’ve lived with and played regularly over the last 43 years. It’s tinged with a little melancholy.”

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Saul Kaye blends the Torah and the blues.
Credit: The Gershman Y

Though he claims credit for creating the musical hybrid that he calls “Jewish Blues,” Saul Kaye credits the initial concept to a divine inspiration. “I think that ideas download to like a thousand people around the planet at once,” he says, “and then somebody runs with it.”

The notion of combining stories from the Torah with American blues music was “downloaded” to Kaye in 2007, but he at first resisted the calling. “I ignored it,” he admits, “largely because my association with Jewish music was not good, and I think that’s true for many people. I really wanted to do it justice on both levels, to pay homage to the blues masters who I love and respect and also to pay homage to my tradition and its stories with integrity.”

The San Francisco-based singer-songwriter has since released three volumes of Jewish Blues, which he defines as “a natural marriage of the music of African-American slaves of this country with the history of Jews as slaves in many countries.” He’ll perform that mash-up tonight at the Gershman Y to kick off the first Philadelphia Jewish Music Festival, which takes place in a number of venues across the city over the next eight days.

Born in South Africa but raised in the States, Kaye discovered the blues at the age of ten when a tape called “Blues Classics” arrived in the mail, just one selection in a batch delivered from one of the then-ubiquitous record clubs. “It had Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, and Percy Mayfield,” he recalls, “and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had never heard anything like that.”

By melding this sound that had made such a profound effect on him with the stories of his cultural tradition, Kaye discovered a way to create a more expansive, emotionally effective music. “The music isn’t about my life and my dramas, which gets boring after a while,” he says. “The stories and lives of the people in the Torah are phenomenal. I have more material to work with than I could write about in twenty lifetimes. I really want to make music that hits people in the kishka, and I feel like the blues does that.”

If you go

Philadelphia Jewish Music Festival
May 1-9
$5-$100, 215-545-4400
www.gershmany.org

Highlights:

Carol Miller (May 2, 7 p.m., Gershman Y): The legendary radio DJ recounts stories from her four-decade career, including introducing Bruce Springsteen to NYC airwaves.

Chana Rothman (May 8, 7 p.m., World Café Live): The singer-songwriter fuses folk reggae, and worldbeat rock.

Michael Feinstein (May 6, 7:30 p.m., Free Library): America’s premier interpreter of the Great American Songbook, Feinstein discusses and performs songs by George and Ira Gershwin in this sold-out performance.

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Boston rapper Slaine — who some might know better from his burgeoning Hollywood career (The Town, Killing Them Softly) — spoke out about the connections some are drawing between deceased bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s musical tastes and his violent actions, in an interview with MTV on Friday. “Millions and millions and millions of kids listen to hip-hop and they don’t blow up bombs at public events to kill innocent women and children,” the La Coka Nostra rapper, whose son and son’s mother were at the marathon that day, said. True dat.

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Type the name Tech N9ne into Pandora and prepare to be transported to a rap wonderland, a place where Cheshire cats spit lyrics.

The station is a cornucopia of lyrical stylings, drawing on everything from Midwest rap to The Doors. It’s what we’ve come to know and expect from Tech N9ne, the rapper who refuses to be defined.

“Before I went independent, they had no idea what I was,” says Tech N9ne, whose real name is Aaron Dontez Yates. “It’s hip-hop, it’s gangsta, it’s rock, it’s everything. It’s kind of hard to see what you’re going to start with every time if you go on my Pandora — it’s Eminem and Ludacris all the time, lyrical guys. I don’t know, but Pandora puts me with insane lyricists, so I like that.”

Yates’ refusal to be pigeonholed hurt him early in his career, as major record labels struggled to characterize him. Seeing the graffiti on the wall, he aborted that mission and launched his own label, Strange Music, in 1999. The company, founded by Yates and his partner, Travis O’Guin, started out in a basement. Now they have multiple buildings, with plans to build a studio.

“I never thought we would outgrow the first big empire we built,” Yates says. “It’s hard using your own money to build things, but obviously it was meant to happen, because it’s working and we’re still on the incline this far in, 14 years in, and we’re still building.”

The rapper’s Independent Powerhouse Tour 2013 hits the Theatre of Living Arts on South Street on April 30 in what promises to be organized chaos — imagine “Pulp Fiction: The Musical.” Joining him onstage will be up-and-comers Brotha Lynch Hung, Krizz Kaliko, Kutt Calhoun, Rittz and Ces Cru.

“I’m sure people have heard rumors that it’s one of the best shows in hip-hop,” he says. “It’s wild, it’s mild. It’s glad, it’s sad. It’s rock and roll, it’s R&B. It’s sentimental, it’s instrumental. It’s a clusterf—.”

Philadelphia will be stop No. 35 on the tour, which will hit 55 different cities. That’s nothing for Yates, who broke the hip-hop record last year when he did 90 shows in 99 days.

“Nothing’s grueling anymore [after that],” he says. “This is our habitat, keep in mind, that the 90 shows in 99 days … we actually did 96 shows in 105 days.”

Yates stays true to his loyal fan base, too. Technicians, as the hardcores are known, pay up to $150 for VIP packages on tour dates. From 3-4 p.m. – or for as long as it takes – Tech and his crew sign autographs and shake hands with everyone in line.

“It’s wonderful, man,” he says. “You stay until [you meet] the very last person that paid to see you perform in the show.”

Dishing on his new album

Yates is an open book when discussing his lyrical stylings and musical influences. But when the topic turns to his forthcoming album, “Something Else,” he becomes a little guarded.

There have been rumors of collaborations with System of a Down, DMX, Rick Ross, Macklemore and Jay-Z. Yates, confessing that he got in trouble for leaking too much during a recent interview on Fuse TV, would only confirm one guest appearance.

“Serj [Tankian], from System of a Down,” he says. “Serj don’t work with anybody. He’s unleashing a monster for my album.”

Tech gets very cryptic when talking about Jay-Z. He admires the Brooklyn rapper greatly and went on tour with him, including a show in Philadelphia a few years back. Still, the two have never collaborated on a track, a problem that Tech is trying to fix.

“I would love to do music with him. I’ve been a fan since ‘Hawaiian Sophie,’” Yates says.

Will Hova get out his seat on “Something Else”?

“I can’t really say what I’m doing,” Yates says sheepishly. “I have a connection, a real close connection. … I have an idea, that’s all.”

Stay tuned. “Something Else” is due to drop June 25.

Five minutes with ‘Tech’:

Best performer you’ve worked with?
Roger Troutman [lead vocalist for the band Zapp]. We recorded “Twisted” back in 2000. I don’t think anything will ever beat that.

How close are you with Lil Wayne?
That’s my man. I was checking in on him when he had that little mishap with his health. I sent him that UGK line, “I just wanna celebrate ‘cause trill niggaz don’t die,” He wrote back that he wasn’t gonna die anytime soon. I send him titties [pictures] from time to time.

What’s on your iPod right now?
Kendrick Lamar M.A.A.D City, every System of a Down album ever put out, Slipknot, Rick Ross, to name a few.

Explain the meaning behind your stage name?
[Kansas City rapper] Black Walt gave it to me in 1988. It’s Tech, but we never spelled it like the gun [TEC-9], then we added N9ne. The number 9 is the number of completion and Tech is short for technique.

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When Matthew Glandorf sits down at the pipe organ at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Sunday to open this year’s Bach Festival of Philadelphia, he won’t be reaching back to the 18th century for his material. In fact, what he plays won’t have been composed until the moment he begins to play.

“I’m starting with an improvisation concert that will encompass three different centuries of style,” says Glandorf, artistic director for the festival and for Choral Arts Philadelphia, who will perform in the styles of Bach’s forebears, the composer himself, and in a more contemporary vein. “It’s almost like channeling to emulate the various styles.”

Glandorf’s performance, “Bach and the Art of Improvisation,” may run counter to people’s expectations from a classical music festival, but it would seem very familiar to the honoree himself. “Bach was a renowned improviser,” Glandorf says, “hailed not only by his colleagues but by people like Frederick the Great who were amazed by his abilities. It’s a skill that was required of professional musicians, especially organists, in the 17th and 18th century.”

The remainder of the festival’s 37th season focuses on several different aspects of Bach’s music, culminating in his magnum opus, the Mass in B-Minor, featuring Choral Arts Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Bach Collegium. Next Saturday, the four principal players of the Collegium will perform an afternoon of chamber music, and Piffaro, the Renaissance Band will present a program of Bach works based on familiar tunes and chorales from the late 15th to the early 18th century, performed on period instruments.

“A modern orchestra is very smooth and has a round, voluptuous sound,” says Glandorf. “Early instruments are a little bit more dynamic, a little more exciting, have more of an edge to the sound.”

Like Glandorf’s era-spanning improvisations, such performances offer a bridge between past and present that he says is always found in Bach’s music. “Bach is of the 18th century, but his music steps out of that century and is universal in its expression. I liken it to Shakespeare, where there are these universal themes that speak to every generation. That’s one of the reasons why Bach’s music continues to capture the imagination.”

Bach Festival of Philadelphia 2013
April 28-May 5
$10-$50, 267-240-2586
www.choralarts.com/bachfestival

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Prepare for a shaken, not stirred, Philly Pops.

The orchestra, with Michael Krajewski at the helm, will perform “Bond and Beyond” this weekend at the Kimmel Center.

“We have everything,” Krajewski boasts. “We start with the very first film, 1962’s ‘Dr. No,’ all the way up to the most recent film.”

The music of the Bond series has become iconic, from Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” to Adele’s Oscar-winning “Skyfall.” Everyone from Paul McCartney to Madonna has recorded Bond themes for the 23 films in the franchise.

So varied, yet similar in a way.

“When I was getting this together, I did notice that there are themes,” Krajewski says. “There’s a sort of five-note dah, dah, dah, dah, dah sequence in the James Bond themes. There are commonalities in the sounds even though the songs are different. Even ‘Skyfall’ works in a few notes of the original Bond.”

The music always has an orchestral flare. And being a secret agent with a license to kill does have its perks.

“It very much is sounding on the exotic side and that matches up with all the exotic locations that you see and all the beautiful girls and the handsome men,” Krajewski says.

Soprano Debbie Gravitte will be the featured vocalist for the show. The “Beyond” part of the program includes renditions of Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” and music from the Austin Powers and Pink Panther movies.

As for Krajewski, he’s filling in for the late Marvin Hamlisch on the Bond show. He’s the principal pops conductor of the Houston Symphony, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and he’ll be taking over as musical director of the Philly Pops when Peter Nero steps down next season.

“I hope I’m not forgotten like George Lazenby,” said Krajewski of the overlooked star of the 1969 Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

“I hope I’m more like Daniel Craig.”

If you go

“Bond and Beyond”
April 26-28
Tickets start at $30
Kimmel Center
1500 Walnut St., Floor 17
www.kimmelcenter.org

The post Philly Pops take on 007 with ‘Bond and Beyond’ appeared first on Metro.us.

Not to throw the phrase “musical genius” around, but pianist Jonathan Biss made his Carnegie Hall debut — to rave reviews — while he was still in his teens. Now 32, Biss is taking a break from teaching music to collaborate with the Philadelphia Orchestra for a series of performances this week.

Biss studied piano at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music under the legendary Leon Fleisher and is now on the faculty of the prestigious school.

“Teaching enriches my music,” he says. “Practicing is often a solo task. Teaching allows me to share my love of music with others.”

Biss is a third-generation musician. Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto, which won the New York Critic’s Circle Award, specifically for Biss’s grandmother, Raya Garbousova. Biss recently performed with his mother, the renowned violinist Miriam Fried, at the Kimmel Center, and his father, Paul Biss, is also a violinist of note.

“My parents just wanted us to play music,” says Biss. “They did not care what instrument it was. My brother chose the piano and I followed his footsteps. I’m glad that I chose a different instrument than them because I am independent and was able to make my own mistakes.”

The multi-talented Biss has the distinction of being the only classical musician Kindle has ever asked to write an e-book. “Beethoven’s Shadow” was ranked the No. 1 music offering on Amazon for several months.

He’s turning to a different musical master for his Philadelphia Orchestra gig, playing Mozart’s rarely heard Concerto No. 13.

“Many people find it comfortable to go to a concert to hear something that they have heard before. I think there is something magical about introducing the audience to something that they have not,” he says.

The post A piano prodigy takes the stage appeared first on Metro.us.

The magic of Philadelphia music often happens in a small club, tucked away, with players whose names you might not immediately recognize but whose music you’ve definitely heard.

West Philly-raised James Poyser of The Roots is bringing a little of that magic to the Kimmel Center’s Commonwealth Plaza on Wednesday. The jam session, Sittin’ In: James Poyser & Friends, is part of the Philadelphia Festival of the Arts.

“This is something we used to do all the time coming up in Philly, at Silk City, Wilhelmina’s and the Black Lily,” Poyser says. “A bunch of like-minded musicians — we all know and listen to the same things — we’d get together, park it, and someone would play a melody or a riff or a DJ would play a record part and we’d get an idea and just go from there.”

That Philly sound has seeped into all kinds of contemporary music, and Poyser has had a major role in it. He’s produced or played on records for everyone from Adele to Common, and he’s an integral part of The Roots sound on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

“It’s very rare to find a band on the road that doesn’t have a musician from the Philly area,” Poyser says. “I’m proud to be a part of that.”

Poyser’s “friends” for the Sittin’ In session include Steve McKie, the ace drummer who has produced Bilal, along with whoever else is in town for the night.

These days, Poyser doesn’t get to spend as much time in the city as he used to. His gig with The Roots on “Late Night,” along with producing and playing, keep him in the 212. Yet, he’s excited about moving to the 11:30 p.m. slot of NBC’s “The Tonight Show” when Fallon and crew take over from Jay Leno in 2014.

“It’s definitely a blessing and God’s favor,” Poyser says. “You know, it’s an honor. … We’re waiting to see — we’re not sure what it entails and we’re anxious to see what happens. The Fallon show is great. We get paid to play music and act like idiots.”

“Sittin’ In: James Poyser & Friends”
Wednesday, 10:45 p.m.
Commonwealth Plaza, Kimmel Center
300 S. Broad St.
Free, 215-731-3333
www.kimmelcenter.org

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“Will’s here,” says an assistant.

No kidding. His laugh —familiar from 100 episodes of “Fresh Prince” — booms across the Hollywood soundstage, as he arrives to meet me. Despite being the single biggest star on the planet, with a net worth of $200 milion, Smith still comes off as happy-go-lucky — and happy to laugh at his own jokes.

His son, Jaden, follows behind, serious, yet gracious. A box-office draw in his own right, after “The Karate Kid,” the 14-year-old toplines their new film “After Earth,” set 1,000 years into the future. In it, his trainee braves a planet overgrown by wild creatures, to save his injured father, played by Smith.

The film’s eco-message made them the perfect Special Guests for our Earth Day edition. In an intimate, hour-long chat, the two discussed working together, how to fix the planet, and the inevitable: life with mom. That very week, Jada Pinkett Smith posted a Facebook missive, clarifying earlier statements about her and Will’s “open relationship,” calling it instead a “grown relationship.”

Smith talked about that as best he could, given that his young son was sitting right there with him.

You guys work together, live together — but online, I see videos of Jaden skateboarding, talking about girls—

Jaden: Um-hmm. Um-hmm.

So I wondered—

Will: Wait. [To Jaden] You be talking about girls a whole lot?

J: In interviews, Dad. About them. I’m not online, like, “Hey, girls, hello!” [Mimes taking a photo of himself] Tweet!

Will, how aware are you of what Jaden’s doing?

W: Not much at all. Not much at all. That’s what I like him to think. [Laughs] I have a group of Men in Black that keep up pretty good.

J: This is what I’ve realized: No matter what I do or how I do it, he knows 100 percent of what’s going on.

W: [Laughs]

J: There’s no point in hiding anything because he knows. Whether he acts on it or not, he knows.

How do you know he knows?

J: I just know that he knows. [Both laugh]

W: I heard Jaden’s friend one time, they were sitting around, talking about something and I came in the room and said, “Hi” and walked out of the room and paused for a second and I hear the friend saying, “Dude, I’m telling you, he knows! He knows!” [Both laugh uproariously]

J: He knows, bro.

When was the last time you were punished, Jaden?

W: We don’t do punishment. The way that we deal with our kids is, they are responsible for their lives. Our concept is, as young as possible, give them as much control over their lives as possible and the concept of punishment, our experience has been — it has a little too much of a negative quality. So when they do things — and you know, Jaden, he’s done things — you can do anything you want as long as you can explain to me why that was the right thing to do for your life.

J: It works pretty well.

But most teenagers aren’t naturally introspective. Jaden, do you find yourself asking yourself deep questions about your behavior and acting accordingly?

J: Yeah. Other teenagers go to parties and sometimes I be like, “Why am I here right now?” And most of the time, I just leave right then and there. Some things I don’t like to do, that other teenagers do. Everyone thinks that since you make movies, you go to parties, and I like to party, but not normal teenage parties.

Are you missing out on a good ol’ fashioned American childhood?

J: Not at all. I go out and skate every night. Hang out with people, skate, hang out with more people, skate to their house.

W: [To Jaden] What do you see as the purpose and point? So you’re not going out and partying — what’s the purpose, what’s the point, what are you doing?

J: It’s not like I don’t want to go to parties because I need to study and go to college; I just don’t wanna go. If they’re gonna play house music, I’m maybe interested, but if it’s some random place and they’re playing Waka Flocka Flame….

You’re anti-generic.

J: Exactly.

Will, how and when did you and Jada decide Jaden could handle a full-fledged movie career?

W: You can never be certain. You have an idea, you can feel your kids, but until the things in their lives start to unfold and the things they cause begin to have effects, you can never totally see. But we felt that because they were choosing a business that we were both successful in, then at a minimum, we could give good advice.

You used the phrase “they were choosing” but did they choose? Jaden, you were going to the red carpet when you were in diapers.

J: It was not going to the red carpet so people could see us, it was going to the red carpet because we had free tickets.

W: [Laughs] That’s what our life was. The family has a movie so they’re going.

J: It started with our mom is going to the red carpet, she doesn’t want to leave us with somebody so she’s going to bring us. Then it got to us walking. And then it got to us starring in movies.

Jaden, your music is trippy. It’s far from Will’s feel-good beats. Is that consciously your own thing?

J: I mean, people are already telling me I look like him, that I talk and walk like him. If I rapped like him too, people would be like, “Let’s go on the Fresh Prince Tour.”

Fresh Prince and Fresh Prince Jr. — I would go to that tour.

J: I had to go way left with it because if I came out with a song with me and a bunch of girls in a car with sunglasses on [the Pacific Coast Highway] going ,”Yeah!”, they’d go, “That’s the average thing to do.” Instead I came out with the video for “The Coolest” and people were like, “Whoa! The camera’s going upside down.”

Will, can you even connect to his music, at your age?

W: At 14, his mind is so much deeper and more complex than my mind was at 14 years old. Lyrically, where he goes and what he creates and how the things are conceptually is beyond what I could create at 14 years old.

Or even later in your career: “Miami” is not telling a complex story.

W: Right. Poetically, he’s beyond where I ever go to with my music. My strength is ideas. And record structure. I knew how to make records in the way you get to the hook when the crowd wants it.

J: That’s what you’re really good at. You could go anywhere and be like, “When I say hip, you say hop,” and they’ll all say it! If I go up there, I’ll say, “All right guys, I’m gonna read you a Shakespearean sonnet real quick, here I go.” [Both laugh]

The funniest part to me is the music, the old school sound of the music that I have in some of my songs is like what his old school beats used to sound like. It’s just different. We’re the opposite, but similar in some ways.

The DNA.

W: That’s my seed. Remember where you came from.

Jaden, would you produce Will’s album?

J: If you decided, like, “All right Jaden, I’m serious, I want to make an album”…

W: Oh, if I was serious?

J: I mean, you have movies to make. Businesses you want to start. You’re a busy man.

W: I see how it is.

Jaden may be too big for you, Will.

W: I know, I know. He’s very serious and very focused and has a very rare combination of talent, desire, willingness and means. Which verrrrry, very rarely do those things come together and converge in the proper timing. So I’m excited to see what he decides to do with his life.

Jaden, what happens when you’re 18 and Will kicks you out of the house.

J: We’ll probably work together ‘till he retires and he probably won’t retire.

W: [Laughs] No we’ve been talking about, he’s been thinking about becoming an emancipated minor.

J: Just thoughts that pop into my head.

They made a movie about that — a girl divorced her parents.

J: Really!

Rent that, get some tips.

W: [Laughs] No, it’s not like that. More the idea that, I want him to have as much command and freedom if he is willing to accept responsibility. Those are two concepts that are inexorably bound. So he’s a very responsible young man so he’s entitled to the maximum freedom. [To Jaden] I said “inexorably.” You heard that? Someone Google that for Jaden.

Justin Bieber, who you’re both friends with, has been in the press for some growing pains. Did you learn anything from his last six months?

W: I talk to Justin once a week and Justin is suffering from immature adulthood in the media and surrounding world. Justin’s not doing anything that a normal 19-year-old wouldn’t want to do and wouldn’t need to do to become a man. The transition from boyhood to manhood is a very difficult transition that he’s handling on a world stage better than 95 percent of the people who talk s— about him.

Bieber’s on Twitter. Jaden, you’re on Twitter. Will, what’s up?

J: He doesn’t have one. Usually there’ll be people who have a Twitter. He doesn’t have one. He likes Facebook.

W: I got 44 million people on Facebook. I’m just saying. I don’t know how many people you got on Twitter.

J: I knew you were going to say that.

W: I’m just saying, I don’t know how many people you got. How many people?

J: Four million.

W: Four million. Yeah. I got that after my first number.

J: I feel like people on Facebook will just randomly follow just anybody.

W: [Laughs hysterically]

Jada’s on Facebook.

W: Oh!

J: Oh!

Will + Jaden: Ohhhhhh!

W: Oh, Mommy be going in!

J: My mom goes in on Facebook! She goes in!

Is she aware other people can read what she writes?

[Both laugh loudly]

J: She’ll be like—

W: She’ll call a family meeting.

Will + Jaden: [Doing Jada impression] “I’m posting this on Facebook!”

J: [continuing impression] “I don’t care what people say. If we get hit for this, this is what the truth of the world is.’”Uh, okkkkay mom. She’ll be on the phone with a manager, “I don’t care what they said, I’m posting this on Facebook.” I think she should write a book.

W: Jada is very serious and opinionated and she loves Facebook because it’s the only place she’s ever had where she’s felt like all of her can be received. She’s struggled her whole life where only a part of her is OK.

In her posts, she can take a generality and break it down into a truth. She posted recently about you having a “grown relationship.”

W: A “grown relationship.” [Looks down]

Anything to add?

W: She put some serious, hardcore truth out there. [Pauses] And I think, the five minutes we have left, aren’t gonna be enough to cover it. [Laughs]

OK, onto the Earth Day issue then?

W: Yes! Earth Day! Please!

Click to read Will and Jaden Smith’s take on what the world will be like in 2043, when Jaden is Will’s age.

Click to read ’1,000 years in the future: Melting point’

• 
  View Video

  Two Smiths, One Big Issue: Will Smith & Jaden Smith to curate Metro

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“Prima! Rufus! Judy!” may sound like an odd name for a Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts show, but it’s a pretty straightforward description of what audiences can expect. The two-part concert starts with sopranos Melody Moore and Kathryn Guthrie, along with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, performing selections from singer-composer Rufus Wainwright’s opera, “Prima Donna.” Then Wainwright himself will reprise excerpts from Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall concert.

Wainwright, the son of folk singers Katie McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, first fell in love with Judy Garland when his family gathered around the television set to watch “The Wizard of Oz” at Easter.

“Watching ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was a big event in my house,” he says. “This was a time before VHS, DVRs, and movies on television. I wasn’t that familiar with her concerts or records.”

When the country was at a low point after 9/11, Wainwright went back to Garland.

“The country had just suffered a gaping wound inflicted on us by Middle Eastern terrorists,” says Wainwright. “This coincided with the Bush-Cheney years. I wanted to listen to music from a more hopeful, effervescent time. It was really about my love for America.”

Wainwright would initially only perform Garland’s songs at parties. He finally was persuaded to sing them at Carnegie Hall in 2006, during two sold-out concerts.

Wainwright clarifies that he “does not impersonate Garland, but sings in her style.”

“Garland was all about the voice,” he says. “’Prima Donna’ is about an aging opera diva, who is dealing with her declining physicality affecting her voice. I was inspired to write the opera by a series of interviews that Maria Callas gave in the ’70s. Then I decided to make it more anonymous.”

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The advent of sound in film killed silent cinema just as it was coming into its own as a distinct and expressive art form. The same could be said for the art of improvising live music to accompany those silent films, before composed scores came along.

Boston composer/pianist Brendan Cooney created Not-So-Silent Cinema to revive that lost musical art, creating new scores for an ever-changing ensemble to accompany classic films. “Live film scoring was a really short-lived performance tradition that only lasted for a couple of decades in history and was forgotten once sound films came out,” Cooney says. “But it’s a really cool mixed-media way of doing music and visual art that has its own unique parameters. I like the challenge.”

Not-So-Silent Cinema began life in Philadelphia while Cooney lived here and played a collage of music: tango, klezmer, jazz, the Balkan brass of the West Philadelphia Orchestra. He drafted several of his bandmates from that ensemble for his first silent film project, a score to the Soviet classic “Battleship Potemkin,” and followed that with soundtracks for “Nosferatu” and “The Mark of Zorro” before leaving for Boston in 2011.

Cooney’s latest project, being performed in Philly this week, is a score for three Buster Keaton shorts. The pianist will be joined by clarinetist Andy Bergman and banjo player Kyle Tuttle. “Buster Keaton’s short films are set in early 1920s American landscapes,” Cooney says, “so I wanted to capture an urban Americana feel reminiscent of early 20th-century American music. I wanted New Orleans jazz, hot jazz, swing, blues, ragtime, bluegrass, blues, klezmer — so I was looking for instrumentation that was able to capture all those vibes.”

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There aren’t many music film festivals in America, claims Roger LaMay, general manager for XPN-FM. There are a few in Europe, and there are festivals — like SXSW — that dedicate a chunk of their programming to films about music. But one of the few devoted entirely to music is the XPN Music Film Festival, now in its second year.

“Music fans like to think visually,” says LaMay. “A documentary form of the creative process is one that’s particularly strong in this festival. You can see how the music came to be in the words and in the portrait of the artists and those around them. It’s really about the creative spark, and the creative spark translated into art.”

That’s true of much of this year’s lineup, including “Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings,” an intimate study of the ukulele virtuoso propelled into the spotlight by an unsolicited YouTube video. His life thus far (he’s 36) and his ambitions (he wants to continue doing this for a living) aren’t that interesting, but the focus on his craft is, with him relentlessly experimenting with an instrument no longer in size than some shoes.

Documentaries make up the breadth of the roster, curated by Philadelphia Film Society artistic director Michael Lerman. (There’s only one carryover — “The History of Future Folk” — from last year’s Philadelphia Film Festival.) But in addition to titles like “Good Ol’ Freda” (about the Beatles’ secretary) and “Twenty Feet From Stardom” (on the subject of backup singers), there’s a wide range of topics and formats.

The Flaming Lips are present with “Freak Night” (not their first cinematic offering with the word “freak” in the title). A documentary-cum-concert movie, it dives into a 2012 Halloween show, with frontman Wayne Coyne decked in zombie makeup and looking like Beetlejuice while the band largely plows through their heavy, proggy “Embryonic.” It’s not the same as seeing one of their mega-concerts in the flesh, but it’s close enough.

“Pleased to Meet Me” is a rare fiction film, where numerous actual musicians (and sometimes actors) John Doe, Aimee Mann and Loudon Wainwright III play musicians of varying skills trying to record a song. The comedy (and occasional drama) aren’t always there, but the atmosphere is affable and the insights into aging musicianhood prove potent.

“The films both document the creative process of music, but are also a work of art in themselves,” says LaMay. “It really does cut across cultures and age groups and demographics. But it’s all about the creative process.”

4 to Catch:

1 “Good Ol’ Freda”: Freda Kelly delves into her history as the Beatles’ secretary, but without getting into the cheap juicy stuff.
Thurs., 7:30 p.m.

2 “Twenty Feet From Stardom”: Backup singers, almost by definition, rarely get their due. This doc seeks to correct that, with aide from Bruce Springsteen and Bette Midler. Sun., 7:30 p.m.

3 “We Juke Up In Here”: The Juke Joints — hopping venues for music, drinking and gambling, of the old Southeast — get their turn in the spotlight. Includes a performance by bluesman Rory Block. Sat., 4:30 p.m.

4 “Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me”: Ignored at the time, influential after, the Memphis rock group — featuring the late Alex Chilton — gets their Great Band doc. Sat., 4:15 p.m.

If You Go:
Through April 14
Various venues, prices

http://xpn.org/events/music-filmfest

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Provocative soul singer Erykah Badu has remained a challenging figure since she emerged on the national music scene 15 years ago.

Perhaps part of the reason she’s kept her edge is that despite selling her share of records, she’s remained outside of the mainstream.

“I believe she’s avoided that — that’s not where she’s trying to go,” says Philly hip-hop impresario Dave Ghet. “She’s definitely trying her best to stay under the radar and with that comes a freedom. Take someone like Mariah Carey. There are records Mariah Carey can’t make.”

But Badu can.

Her music will be celebrated April 12 by the Ghet-led Soulidified crew in “Love of My Life: A Celebration of the Music of Erykah Badu,” at the World Cafe Live upstairs stage.

Badu burst on the scene with the 1997 album “Baduizm,” which featured the hit single “On & On,” an alluring earthy, jazzy excursion. The track and video established Badu as a figure of importance in the music world and as one of the leading lights of the then burgeoning neo-soul movement. Since then, she’s represented the ladies in “Tyrone,” spoke out for independence in “Bag Lady” and celebrated hip-hop in “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop).”

“(Badu) can make the records she makes because of who she’s become,” Ghet says. “She’s not at that level of success where it’s a hindrance to the creativeness of what artist can do.”

But those who know, know. The Soulidified crew have been paying tribute to the greats, from Marvin Gaye to Mary J. Blige, for the last three years. Ghet, aka Dave Reynolds, made his name as Dave Ghetto of Camden, whose hood-centric but not hood-restricted rhymes made him a man of importance on the national hip-hop scene.

During the Soulidified performance, both guys and gals will take turns on vocals on Badu’s hits. But no, there won’t be a recreation of Badu’s 2010 “Window Seat” video, in which she stripped down naked on the streets of Dallas.

“That was very provocative,” Ghet says.

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